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Rh the country in his own hands, leaving, however, an Englishman called Aethelweard in charge of part of Western Wessex. In East Anglia and Yorkshire he relied on Scandinavians, giving the former to Thorkil the Tall and the latter, as already noted, to his Norse brother-in-law Eric, said to be the most chivalrous of the vikings. In Bernicia he left the native line of high-reeves of Bamborough undisturbed, and even put his confidence eventually in the murdered Uhtred's son Ealdred. In Western Mercia he could hardly do otherwise at first than recognise Eadric; but it was impossible to trust such a dangerous turncoat, and so it is not surprising to find that within a year Knut charged him with treachery and allowed Earl Eric to put him to death. In his place Knut set up as Earl of Mercia another Englishman called Leofwine, whose fannly had great possessions round Lichfield and Coventry, but he apparently did not give him Eadric's great estates in Gloucestershire or along the middle Severn, for shortly afterwards both Worcestershire and Herefordshire appear as separate earldoms. Over these he set Scandinavians, the former district going to his nephew Hákon, the son of Eric, and the latter to Eglaf, son of Thorgils Sprakaleg, whose elder brother Ulf was married to Estrith, Knut's half-sister. What was done in the case of the London districts and the Five Boroughs is not recorded. The names of the above earls, however, sufficiently indicate Knut's general idea, which was to employ English magnates as far as he could, but simultaneously to give sufficient rewards to his more important kinsmen, whether Danish or Norse, so that they in their turn might be able to reward their military followers. As a result a very considerable sprinkling of new Scandinavian families settled in different parts of England, but at the same time there was no systematic forfeiture of lands, and in particular very little ousting of English peasantry to make way for fresh Scandinavian freedmen.

Having once begun a conciliatory policy, Knut adhered to it steadily. In 1018 he held a great gemot at Oxford in which he declared his intention of governing in accordance with the law of Edgar, and the same year he paid off the bulk of his Scandinavian forces and sent them back to Denmark, retaining only forty ships in his service, whose crews afterwards came to form a kind of royal body-guard, known as the hus-carls. The next year he was abroad, securing his hold on Denmark, but signalised his return in 1020 by two acts which shewed still further his trust in his English subjects. The first was the appointment of a Sussex magnate called Godwin to be Earl of Wessex, and the second the issue of a remarkable proclamation declaring that he meant in future to carry on his government in strict conformity with the wishes of the English bishops. Here in fact we have the keynote of his internal policy for the rest of his life. Like Edgar he became a devout son of the Church, a liberal ecclesiastical benefactor and a patron of the monastic or reforming party. More and more he allowed himself to be guided by ecclesiastical advisers, men like Aethelnoth, whom he made Archbishop of Canterbury,